Royalist and republican, Khalqi and Parchami, Soviet Union and the West, communist and Islamist, mujahid and Talib, Hanafi and takfiri, al Qaeda and America, warlord and technocrat, Pashtun and non-Pashtun, Islamic Emirate and Islamic State, KGB, ISI, and CIA – all have for decades carried on an uninterrupted struggle in Afghanistan. Attempts to end the war have but established new antagonisms, new conditions of conflict, new forms of warfare. The conflict generates these antagonisms rather than the reverse, forcing us to face the real origins of violence: Afghanistan’s relations to the state system from which it emerged. These theses delineate the ever-changing conflict’s constant causes, which any effort at peacemaking in Afghanistan must address.

In previous posts on this blog, we have described the use of proxy forces to impose costs on a shared adversary (AKA, unconventional warfare). But perhaps the most difficult aspect of unconventional warfare is not in its planning or execution, but in knowing when it is an appropriate approach at all. A recent article from […]

Join the Almost Diplomatic crew to discuss geopolitics, national security and nonsense over a couple beers. Episode Eleven we return to space with a special guest to make us look better. We focus on Anti-Satellite Systems (ASAT) and their dynamics along with the future of the commercial sector of space in relation to international policy. Follow […]

An article in Military Times describes the strides made in recent operations by Afghanistan’s own tactical air controllers: During recent operations around ­Marjah, Afghan troops used small ­ScanEagle drones to identify targets, which were then destroyed by Afghan A-29 Super Tucano turboprop aircraft, said Marine Maj. Kendra Motz, a spokeswoman for Task Force Southwest. The […]

Join Almost Diplomatic to discuss geopolitics, national security and nonsense over a couple beers. Episode ten we discuss among other things, the dramatic foreign policy shift of the United States to an “American First” stance, beginning with a discussion of the new National Security Strategy. How does the document square with Trump’s own priorities? How is the Trump administration’s foreign policy shaking out?

According to Army Times, the 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade, based out of Fort Benning, Georgia, will be making its inaugural deployment to Afghanistan in early 2018, following predeployment training at Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana, in January. Astonishingly, this comes less than one year after the Army unveiled the new concept of Security Force Assistance Brigades, which are specifically designed and mandated to train foreign conventional infantry, artillery and other troops, also known as security force assistance. But The advent of SFABs has not been without controversy.